It specified initiatives and activities that will empower and enlist women and girls in efforts to achieve international peace and security.
On June 11, 2019, the White House released the U.S. Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security, which superseded the National Action Plan.
An opinion piece in POLITICO[5] stated, "The challenges for women are still steep, but they are stepping up to take ownership of their futures like never before.
In 2015, a Huffington Post piece[6] on foreign policy in Afghanistan referred to the US National Action Plan, observing, "In the political world, there is often a long distance between words on a page and realities on the ground."
During that decade the region was embroiled in post- Soviet conflict and Ambassador Hunt acted as a third party peace-maker.
During negotiations she arranged amongst Yugoslavian representatives she was embarrassed to realize she hadn't included a single woman in the peacemaking discussion, despite the many women contacts she had in the region.
Hunt writes, “Women’s perspectives had been missing at Dayton where, many told me, they would have made clear the ‘guaranteed’ right of return would be meaningless without the apprehension of war criminals.
The result was not only a flawed right of return, but also a country bifurcated.”[8] There was growing international sentiment in the 90s that the well being of people, not states, should be of utmost priority to the peace and security community.
Clinton's speech highlights the rumblings about the ways wars uniquely impact women that were starting to be discussed in the early 90s.
The plan is broken down into the five objectives, essentially the reasons behind the creation and implementation of the Executive Order, and the four benchmarks, which allow policymakers to measure the success of each new policy with specific guidelines in mind.
[16] Created on December 1, 2011, and maintained as mandated by Executive Order 13595[15] this plan is the culmination of the past 20 years of thinking on women and foreign policy.
The plan was deemed politically expedient in large part due to the growing proof that including women in peace processes makes the deals more effective.
In response Secretary Clinton offered these remarks when speaking at a release event shortly after the plan was announced, “Now, why is all this happening, all these countries, the United Nations, NATO, and certainly us?
Since the implementation of the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security there have been a few key global moments that show the larger impact on bringing feminist foreign policy as more mainstream in the international community.
Its preamble states “This bill expresses the sense of Congress that: the United States should be a global leader in promoting the participation of women in conflict prevention, management, and resolution and post-conflict relief and recovery efforts; the political participation and leadership of women in fragile environments, particularly during democratic transitions, is critical to sustaining democratic institutions; and the participation of women in conflict prevention and conflict resolution helps promote more inclusive and democratic societies and is critical to country and regional stability.”[27] The Women, Peace, and Security Act required a national strategy as well as stand-alone implementation plans for each participating department, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.